Now, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time; in fact, I didn't know he was still alive.

I didn't know about this book. Amazon says it was published last September, and I'm going to snag a copy now. Thanks for mentioning it.

Everything Skiprr said above, plus some. I very much enjoy reading the genre. Like Skiprr says, I've acclimated myself to the typos, unless they are particularly egregious. I'm currently reading the Kindle edition of "The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny" by William Strauss and Neil Howe. It is NOT fiction. It's more a book about the philosophies and methodologies of the study of history. It has quite a few typos in it. I've had to just let them go.

But getting back to the genre of books like "One Second After" and "Lights Out" for a moment, I don't read them to be transported, the way I was transported by Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea", or the essays, short stories, and novels of Samuel Clemens. I read the "One Second After" genre for exactly three purposes:

They can be instructive to people who place a value on some degree of prepping for disaster. It doesn't really matter if the disaster is an EMP, or a global disease epidemic, or a civil war, or a financial meltdown, or whatever. What matters is that many of the techniques, practices, and materials for survival during a catastrophic disaster are the same, regardless of the cause of the disaster. So these books are a good way to learn about what kinds of preparations should one be focusing on.

They are entertaining, plain and simple. They are not complicated reading. They don't require a lot of intellectual horsepower to follow the story, so they're not a workout.

Frankly, my own personal bias confirmation. Many of these authors have similar thoughts to my own about where the country is headed, and how bad it could get if it isn't turned around. I know.......that is a shamelessly indulgent reason, but there it is.

By the way, a former member of this forum has been working for decades in the power delivery industry, and we've been having an ongoing conversation about this stuff for many months now. He has a prepping mindset, and his social/political views mirror my own pretty closely; and HE says that all this EMP stuff is a lot of malarkey. There are far more serious threats, such as terrorist attacks on power distribution stations, etc., which would affect power distribution at the local, or possibly regional, level - but that the risk of an EMP causing a grid-wide shutdown that would paralyze the nation is nearly impossible. It is too well protected actually for a general collapse of the grid to happen.

ScottDLS wrote:I am a big reader also, but I have completely embraced the technology of e-readers and Internet. I've had a subscription the Wall Street Journal since I was 19 and converted it to paperless about 9 years ago, when the e-readers came out. I used to haul paperbacks around with me in my carry on bags for the last 22 years that I've been traveling for business. I still read 1-2 a week, but all on the iPad now. I order the books from my favorite novelists as soon as they're published online.

I like to give hardback books as gifts at Christmastime because they make a nice presentation and there is something nice about the feel of a printed book, but as much as I read books, magazines, and newspapers, I'd run out of space if I didn't go electronic.

I am also reading an interesting philosophical treatise about how we currently look at history, and how we ought to. It's called "The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell us About America's Rendezvous with Destiny".